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That's good info about the person still driving it if she has an otherwise inoperable HVB battery for whatever reason. I'm just going from posts like this: "My service advisor said 3.8 kwh is the lower capacity warranty limit before they replace the battery pack." and this: "Dealer is telling me my reduced capacity is due to a faulty charger." and this: "Battery Warranty for Low Capacity (4.1 kWh)" - I hear what you're saying, but I think there's enough evidence in these posts that it's worth it for people suffering extreme degradation (I'd say over 50% is "extreme") to document their issues and work with their dealer to see what the cause is and see if they do indeed get warrantied or fixed without replacing the battery.

One still needs to plug RFTs after removing screw. So, the benefit apparently of an RFT is that you can still drive on it and thus no need to carry spare, patch kit, jack, wrench in car and one Is “safer” (I guess blow out proof). But, I have always been able to “catch” a screw in tire by monitoring tire pressure well before the modern TPMS provides a low tire pressure warning. There was only one time in 1979 when an RFT would have been a benefit: when I hit a pothole in our Accord, bent the rim, and lost all pressure in about 5 seconds at about 35-40 mph. I put the spare on in the rain with the light of a streetlight maybe 150 feet away. I agree they are expensive to me as “insurance” for an unlikely event (one time need in over 55 years of driving/vehicle ownership): assume 40 tire replacements (conservative estimate) on 1,500,000 family driven miles, and an inflation adjusted cost of current cost difference of around $150 a set. So, that would be $6000 current value so I wouldn’t have had to change tire in rain in 1979.? So, the likelihood of it happening again for me might be 6.7 % chance per 100k miles driven. So, the “insurance” cost might be $400 per 100k miles - actually not very much given RFTs could save your life.! I forgot there’s likely a FE hit also which would to the cost.

No. The liftgate has an electric latch. So don't store jumper cables back there.

Congrats on selling it. It is indeed a nice car, and sadly an unloved one....and this is why prices are depressed when compared with other Hybrid autos. I would like to say it is because of the early Transmission reliability, but I don't find many people who even know this issue existed (beyond the owners who were burned by it) and so it must be something else. As a Ford stock holder, it bugs me that the company was not able to effectively market a car with such great utility.